“The cost was a loss of spontaneity and aliveness and I noticed that I wasn’t willing to continue paying that cost. I heard lots of instruction about making my being a mass of this or that, becoming totally absorbed in this or that, but that felt much like the dagger plunging techniques that had given me some relief from my thoughts, but which also had cost. Gradually, I got tired of watching reruns of my life, or reruns of fantasies of what my life might be and as my interest in these thoughts waned, so did the number of thoughts I noticed. I didn’t try to bring my mind back to anything, I didn’t try to do anything except keep watching as my thoughts unfurled. I sometimes felt like I was indulging myself, or even cheating, as I sat and watched hour after hour as my mind did what it did. So I did, I spent many 7 day retreats observing my mind being occupied with distracted thoughts. What I understood I was to do was to observe my mind and get familiar with it, not to control it.
“When I encountered Zen, I appreciated the lack of direction about what to do with my thoughts. But, it set up an adversarial relationship between me and myself. Eventually, just trying to keep up with the thoughts that needed to be dealt with became a point of focus and that helped with not getting caught up in the thoughts themselves.
The volume of distracting thoughts that I was attempting to deal with using that technique led to something resembling a game of whack a mole, as soon as I plunged the dagger into one, another popped up. I remember one technique we were taught, was to imagine the distracting thought residing in our heart and to imagine plunging a Tibetan. “When I first started meditating, it was very much about not having my mind being occupied by distracted thoughts. I think it describes a kind of phenomenon a lot of people have gone through in the course of their practice. I don’t think I know him personally, but he’s in the Aiken Roshi - John Tarrant lineage. This is his quote: “If you wish to not have your mind occupied with distracted thoughts, you must allow it to be so occupied.” Then I want to read a couple of paragraphs of commentary on that quote by a teacher named David Weinstein. First is a quote by Dahui, a 12th Century Chinese Zen teacher who was the dharma successor of the compiler of the Blue Cliff Record. Let’s explore some Huangbo quotes you can pack lightly in your carry-on as you adventure.I’d like to begin by reading some quotes that lead from that contemporary compendium of wisdom, Facebook.
He emphasizes that the mind is Buddha, so enlightenment is more about unwinding and throwing away all the useless junk and judgments and wrong perceptions we’ve stuck on our minds. In his teachings, which his students wrote down in the form of sermons or question-and-answer dialogues, Huangbo is well-known for dismissing any dualism between ordinary thoughts and enlightened thoughts or special spiritual practices to chase some different state. So we can trace a direct line all the way back to the teachings of Huangbo. Thich Nhat Hanh, a living Zen master, author of Peace is Every Step, practices in a Zen Buddhist tradition that identifies as descending from Linji. Chinese: 黄檗希運 or Huang Po in older English-language works) was an influential Zen master in 8th and 9th century Tang Dynasty China and the teacher of Línjì, whose teachings we explored previously: Linji Travel Quotes.
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